Hamas doesn't even need to pick a peaceful means of resolving disputes, they can continue to be a militant resistance. They just can't act like crazed lunatics.
Israel has chosen a violent solution to their problem: Hamas Rockets. They didn't ask, bribe, etc., they are bombing. Violence is acceptable in international disputes.
The problem with Hamas is that they are crazed thugs. They used to "retaliate." If Israel took out one of their important people, they launched a wave of crap at Israel, and the tit-for-tat system caused a someone uneasy truce... Israel would occasionally take out a major Hamas person, and Hamas would blow up a pizza shop/disco hall... or Hamas would see a target of convenience and hit Israel, who would counter attack. That lasted for years.
The problem is that Hamas decided that they were not interest in generally tranquil relations with the occasional period of innocent deaths, they needed a real war with Israel, so they adopted a policy of continual rocket attacks. Instead of waves of attacks when they had some invented cause, they would rocket daily. Eventually they would strike a nerve with Israel, Israel would attack, and they would get the war they needed. They needed a war because they wanted to be the big bad resistance, a crown that Hezbolah grabbed in 2006.
But Hamas has become the crazy thugs of the area, just attacking daily. They aren't looking for anything other than death and destruction, or there would be some sort of meaningful methodology to what is going on.
The entertainment industry was an extremely enthusiastic and early backer of Barack Obama. When he needed large masses of money to make abandoning the finance system smart, they were ponying up millions for him, in a single night, so he didn't have to do multiple big fundraisers. The Democratic Party has been a heavy recipient of financial support from them. Unions supplied the GOTV manpower for the party, even if Senator Obama built his own network as well, and the entertainment industry, trial lawyers, and other big money components like Wall Street (Wall Street has been 2:1 Democrat since the Party and Street realized under Clinton that a careful tax and regulation policy can snuff out competition, raising stock prices, even if you have to pay more in taxes).
There are many positive aspects to Sen. Obama's election and becoming President in 11 days. There may be some positive aspects of the enlarged Democratic majority in Congress (I hate large majorities in Congress, because if you don't need moderates in both parties, the wing nuts are in charge).
But don't pretend that pro Entertainment legislation, laws that make more things civil torts as enforcement, and business regulations that somehow entrench the oligopolies that most of the S&P 500 firms operate in, and protect the existing financial sector players at the expense of smaller competition isn't part of the equation.
When the GOP gets power, the religious right gets bones on a bunch of abortion related policies (funding orgs, etc.), the military industrial complex gets Fed, defense contractors get big contracts, etc.
But, if you expect the new administration and Congress to be supportive of the anti-copyright ideals of Slashdot, you are simply ignoring who butters the Democratic Parties bread.
The ONLY reason that isreal hasnt just simply walked into and wiped gaza off the map to build their own stuff is simply the fact that hamas is there.
Really? Hamas dates back to 1982, Israel has held the greater Gaza City area since 1967... in those 15 years, were the Palestinians wiped off the map?
Settlement in Gaza wasn't really popular, because it's in the middle of nowhere. The "strategic" settlements have always been a small minority of the settlements, people really committed to greater Israel, and mostly a religious zionist population looking for cheap land for large families and the ability to work the land.
Most of the Israeli population centers in the disputed territories are in a small ring around Jerusalem... because people commute from there to the nation's capital.
If the Palestinians wanted a state, and came out and set, "We offer peaceful living, we want Gaza, and the land on the West Bank of the Jordan except major population centers around Jerusalem, to replace Jordan's control of Muslim religious sites in Jerusalem, and will agree to small Jewish section of Hebron in return for a small Palestinian controlled section of Jerusalem, and the right of return is the right to return to Palestinian areas," you'd have peace tomorrow. That's not so far off from what is possible, and Israel could agree to it in a heart beat.
Instead, it's all about "resistance." They don't even know what they are resisting anymore, but they've raised generations of their people on hate and death worship, and they don't even have reasonable goals. Israel has spent 17 years getting the people ready for a two state solution, the Palestinian leadership still claims all of Mandate Palestine west of the Jordan river.
Israel is clearly violating the firm international law against collective punishment. It is killing and intimidating an entire population to punish it for the crimes of a few. If you think that this type of behaviour is acceptable, then I presume you also think that September 11 was acceptable insofar as the US has not exactly been an angel in its activities in the Middle East and therefore it was acceptable for a group from that region to exact revenge on defenceless US civilians? No? How odd.
No, collective punishment is when a militant hides in a city, and rather than risking troops to flush them out, you carpet bomb the city. "Intimidating the population," "crimes of the few," the government of Gaza is Hamas... defacto since they ousted the PA, and quasi-legally since Hamas's legislative electoral victory was based on dominating (70%+) the votes in Gaza. The blockade is legal because Israel is in a state of belligerency with Hamas run Gaza.
Until Israel removes all illegal settlements and withdraws to its original borders, it will not have the moral high ground in this debate. If it does that and is subsequently attacked, then it will have my full sympathy and will be justified in limited and properly targeted retaliation.
What is magical about the 1966 borders? What makes them legitimate? Or do you want to go back to 1948 (Egypt and Israel did a small land swap between the wars, which Hamas originally claimed that the Gaza withdrawal was incomplete. Or do you mean the UN Partition plan, rejected by the Arab side? Israel has NEVER had a recognized eastern border... the 1948 armistice line was an armistice demarkation, NOT a legal boder... and with the withdrawal from Gaza, Israel IS within it's pre-1967 borders in the disputed area.
Whenever Israel gives up land to "get the moral high ground," they get attacked from that land, and critics conveniently forget that they gave up that land. Israel retreated from Gaza, and rockets rained down ever since, so why on earth should they withdraw from land where rockets could hit major population and economic centers like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Take a trip to Israel one time, IT ISN'T THAT big, without passage through Judea and Samaria (which you really don't have), the country has a choke point where it is too narrow to be safe. Israel, grabbing Gaza, cut it in half. When Jordan last launched an attack (1967), they tried to split the country in two. That's a dangerous situation without a reason to believe that it will be peaceful.
There are things intrinsic in the Jewish and Islamic religions that make it difficult to tolerate the existence of the other. For the orthodox Jew, something like a mosque on top of the temple mount is going to be pretty annoying, wouldn't you say? Furthermore, in the Old Testament, the Jews were commanded to not allow any false religion in their lands, no other gods, etc.
Correct, however, Islam isn't a problem. RAMBAM ruled that Islam wasn't worshiping of false gods or idolatry, and therefore a valid Noachide faith. While Ashkenazi law doesn't really deal with Islam, Sephardic law generally follows RAMBAM, and in theory for land based issues, Sephardic law governs Israel because it's in the Sephardic area. Ashkenazi customs don't dispute RAMBAM's ruling, so there is ZERO problem, under Orthodox Judaism, for Muslims to live and dwell within the land referred to as Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel, basically Jewish lands).
The Mosque on top of the Temple Mount is a separate issue, mostly because it's inconveniently located where the Third Temple will stand. However, without an unblemished red heffer, you can't purify people to enter the holiest areas, so under Orthodox law, Jews can't enter there. So while Orthodox Jewish law may prohibit the Dome of the Rock, nobody can really do anything about it, so it's an academic issue.
Regarding Christianity, there is no issue with non-Jews worshiping Jesus as messiah. There is a question of whether the worship of the trinity, statues of saints (in Catholic Churches), renders Christianity idolatry... but no ruling that it is... the the rule of thumb is not to enter a Church, in case it IS idolatry, but that the non Jewish Christians inside it aren't necessarily engaged in idolatry so the rules regarding idolatry don't apply either.
Now I have ZERO clue what the law says regarding a Hindu Temple setting up shop in Israel, but that's WAY above my pay grade. If you want real explanations, and not a very lay explanation on Slashdot, consult your local Orthodox Rabbi.
Any issues that lay Jews have with Christianity isn't theological in nature, but rather a series of rulings during centuries of Christian persecution, which likely colored the judgment of the Ashkenazi Rabbis.
I used to think that but then I read some history and started following current events. I now think it's "Israel wants land (which hasn't belonged to them in >2000 years) and Hamas (who represent people that they took it from) wants it back". At one point I think that the majority of Palistinians would have settled for "Just don't take any more." but that has unfortunately passed.
What time period is that? At no point has anyone on the Palestinian side said that. The 1948 partition was no good, the 1967 lines were no good for years, no the Clinton parameters are no good.
Most of Israel has abandoned Greater Israel... Golan is a different matter than the west bank of the Jordan or the Gaza strip... and the old city of Jerusalem.
However, if the Palestinians were serious about peace, they would agree the the Right of Return is not realistic, and that a financial settlement INCLUDING the displaced Jews from Arab lands and the displaced Arabs in now-Jewish lands would be worked out.
If that were the case, we'd be arguing over borders.
You are welcome to wish/dream/pray that Israel will cease to exist as a nation... but if you think that the Israelis will stand by and let that happen, you're dreaming... and you're not advocating peace.
Israel normally gets massive amounts of terror and destruction in response to giving up land... when they do what you don't want them to do, occupy and settle land, they get relative peace and tranquility. When they abandon the land and retreat, they get attacked from that land. So regardless of what you think is right, if you were Israel, would you keep trading land for peace, or say screw it, and return to occupation.
So by Israeli logic, Hamas is PERFECTLY JUSTIFED in FIRING ROCKETS INTO ISRAEL in response to the blockade of Gaza.
Did I ever suggest that Hamas didn't have the right to rocket Israel? Gaza and Israel are in a state of belligerency. They are hostile powers. When there is a cease fire, they cease fire, the rest of the time, they fight.
Hamas is well within its rights, as the defacto government of Gaza, to wage war against Israel in response to the blockade. In doing so, they are permitted to attack any valid military target. I think that Israelis that call it terrorism when they attack troops/bases are out of their mind. Similarly, the nuclear powerplant in Dimona is a perfectly valid target, as are any of the ports in the area. Sderot, on the other hand, is a small development town with no strategic relevance. Now, if they target Dimona and hit Sderot, that's not a war crime, but they aren't in the same direction, so they'd be liars.
Israel retaliated, in 1967, for an "illegal" blockade, which is an act of war.
Hamas is perfectly permitted to engage in hostilities with Israel. Hamas is NOT permitted to engage in Perfidy and other war crimes while the Israel bashers blame Israel for civilian deaths.
War is not illegal... Hamas's actions are illegal. Hamas may fire rockets towards Israeli military and government targets, but Israel is permitted to respond to that act of war with its own acts of war.
Savages, you say? Seventy dead innocents to kill two soldiers? That's barbaric. Israel should be ashamed of itself, if I was an Israli I'd be at the wailing wall in sackcloth and ashes begging God's forgiveness.
You seem to be confused as to the nature of war crimes. It is a SEVERE war crime, Perfidy to do what those two militants did. You are expressing outrage at the wrong side. Those two Hamas Militants caused the deaths of 68 civilians by engaging in Perfidy, their families should be mourning and begging for forgiveness for the acts of their kin.
It is NOT acceptable for militants to hide amongst civilians so that when they are killed, there are civilian deaths.
If 3 men rob a bank, and the SWAT team has to storm it, and innocent people die, do you blame the SWAT team, or the bank robbers? Any harm that comes to someone as a result of your criminal actions is your fault.
Like the SWAT team, the IDF tries to minimize civilian casualties (called collateral damage in military matters), but should NOT be held responsible for those deaths.
Attitudes like yours are WHY this crap goes on. If Hamas were condemned, instead of Israel, from deaths related to their acts of terror (targeting civilians with rockets), or in cases like this, Perfidy, we'd probably have a peace process. Instead, because people like you sympathize with these monsters, the Gazans are under attack because there is no way to root out Hamas. Hamas hides behind "human shields" forcing civilian casualties...
NEARLY EVERY SINGLE CIVILIAN CASUALTY IN GAZA WOULD be AVOIDED IF THE MILITANTS WORE UNIFORMS AND AVOIDED CIVILIAN AREAS, requirements of a militia under the laws of war. Hamas has chosen to increase civilian casualties to mount political pressure on Israel. Every single person that protest this operation BECAUSE OF CIVILIAN CASUALTIES has blood on their hands, because you encourage Hamas to maximize the civilian deaths in Gaza.
Israel is targeting the 15000 militants in Hamas. Every peace of collateral damage is a result of Hamas's wanton war crimes.
The thing with unions is that, when protected by law in closed shop states, is that they become a monopoly on labor. As we know in other markets, a monopoly is able to extract rents and create deadweight losses in the economy. Classical economics looks at where unions are economically useful and dangerous, consider a few scenarios.
1. Highly specialized labor (single monopsony employer)... there is only one buyer for this labor... In this scenario, I have poor bargaining power. If my labor is worth $100/hour to the employer, I should be able to extract a wage of approximately $25/hour. However, if my skills are non transferrable, so if I leave my employer, I need a semi-skilled job at $12.50/hour, I have a poor bargaining position. The wage negotiation is between $12.50 (my BATNA - best alternative to a negotiated agreement) and $50, the value to the employer less fringe/overhead costs. In an open market, you'd expect the salaries to be around $25 (1/4 the gross value to the company), if labor is scarce with a bunch of employers (see a scenario like professional sports with free agency), the employee can extract more of the surplus, but if the employers are scarce (highly trained systems level Windows programmers), then I have difficulty extracting a good wage. In this scenario, which was the classical unionization scenario, unions help employees get fair compensation, because with only one buyer of labor, they have monopsony power, so union monopoly/employer monopsony can help the marketplace. Keep in mind, during the heavy unionization of Detroit and the growth of its benefits, we suspended the market economy in war time with all sorts of industrial boards to allow companies to collude during the Great Depression and WW II, so the automotive industry, steel industry, etc., were effectively a single employer.
So with unions, you fight over the surplus, without unions, the specialized employer is able to extract most of it... This scenario also played out in plenty of small "company towns" where a single mill, mine, factory, or plant was the primary employer in the town. Without employee protections, the employer was free to exploit the workers because there was
2. Scare labor, plentiful employers... Look at professional sports post free agency, pre salary caps. The supply of genuine game changing players is VERY small, there are only a handful of baseball pitchers and showy sluggers, basketball players (playmakers in any position dominate), quarterbacks, running backs, etc. that can dramatically influence a teams fortunes (success on the field, putting people in stands, selling merchandise). That's why the leagues attempt to skirt anti-trust by doing things as a league and claiming that their competition is other sports, and the players unions basically used their status as unions (with those anti-trust exemptions) to permit it. In the early days of free agency in baseball, you saw salaries for star players EXPLODE, while lots of players languished at or near the "league minimum," and most baseball teams lose money. The idea of salary caps in other sports was an attempt, in the name of "competitiveness and parity" to keep more of the profits for the owners... If there are only 5 amazing quarterbacks in the league, and teams had to pay fair market for them, they'd extract most of the profits from the team. Sports have some unique characteristics that make this arrangement reasonable... you aren't out to destroy your competition, just best them... the Yankees want to beat the Red Sox, they aren't trying to put them out of business to eliminate competition. But, the tighter the salary caps, the less the top players make, because it temper demand for them, but the most competitive the league is (to a point). The union is necessary if the league is allowed to collude to keep prices down, take out the collusion, and the "workers" would extract most of the profits from sports.
3. Common labor, scarce employers... Here the employer should be able to keep wages down... There is
You have a BRAND NEW vaccine, where we don't have long term data on it, that prevents a disease that affects a small percentage of people with a virus... oh, and the only way to get that virus is a behavior that they don't their children to engage in. Given that vaccines always carry SOME risk, however small, it isn't necessarily irrational that they not want their young daughters given it.
I have a cousin, as secular as they come, that passed on giving it to his daughter that was 10 at the time. He thinks that it's probably a good idea in a few years, but that his non sexually active daughter didn't need to be a guinea pig, and that by the time she was 14 or 15, we'd then have 4-5 years of results, which seemed better than 0.
That said, vaccinating people "at risk" is BAD public policy, since the ideal vaccination is blanket to wipe out the virus. A 90% effective vaccine with 95% penetration is probably more useful than a 95% vaccination with 30% penetration, because you can eliminate spreading the virus, which generally wipes it out.
I thought that that was a fair disclaimer. I'm an NT 4 MSCE, and Citrix Metaframe 1.8 CCA. I disclosed that I'm not aware of how this plays out on Vista, but that I assumed it was fixed, Vista broke a lot of backwards compatibility to modernize things.
I discussed the historical problems with Windows Security, why it was a difficult problem to fix. I can't comment on Windows Vista, I use OS X as my desktop OS now, Red Hat Linux as my server OS, and run XP under Parallels for the occasional Windows App.
Comparing Windows NT 5.x (2000/XP) to Mac OS 7.5 is beyond absurd. The Win2K/WinXP product line is one major revision back. OS 7.5 is about 6 major (treating System 8/9 as one major version, OS 10.0/10.1 were pretty similar, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, and 10.5 were major revisions under the hood). There is no Windows NT system 6 major revisions back, you'd be comparing Windows 386 2.0 (or being generous, 3.0) to get something as comparatively archaic.
However, a user's opinion on OS X from 10.3 or 10.4 wouldn't be irrelevant to a discussion of OS X, because while the architecture has underwent substantial changes, the core is similar. Vista appears to be a major break from the NT 3.51/NT 4/Win2K_XP product line, not as substantial a break as Windows -> Windows NT (Or Mac OS -> Mac OS X) was, but similar to the NT 3.1 -> NT 3.51 break... the major break from NT 3.51 -> 4.0 was the introduction of the Win95 libraries for applications and migration of the video system into the kernel.
The issue with Windows is two fold. First, marketshare. And second, an over complex user-environment where too much functionality is available on the "user" side of the security wall. Both of these issues affected Unix up until the mid nineties, where its disproportionate share of Internet nodes and the amount of stuff running as the default user (which in Unix was root, which also happened to be the account with the most rights.)
No, the Windows problem was that to migrate from DOS + Windows shell to Windows NT, was a slow, painful 10 year process with LOTS of growing pains. Windows 4.x series (Win95, Win98, WinME) were supposed to be a singular OS before the transition to NT, and was created because the uptick to NT 3.51 was low because of the RAM requirements. The original plan was 3.1 for home users, NT 3.1 for "Workstations," and Win32s was released to let people target both OSes.
As we moved through Win 3.11 w/ Win32s -> Win95 -> Win98 -> WinME, the NT systems grew in popularity. Lack of advanced DirectX support prevented NT 4.0's being the transition, Win2K was close but price kept it out, and WinXP finally merged the OSes. By that point, it'd been 8 years or so since the first 32-bit programs came out. The ones targeted mass market, originally Win32s, and later Win95/NT4 libraries, were generally assuming the consumer version. On the consumer Windows, there WAS NO SECURITY model, so it was common for applications to assume lots of access. This meant that while NT 4.0/Win2K gained market share and had the security model from the NT system, the security wasn't used and users had full access to the drive, because the alternative was broken software.
To not break applications from 1995 - 1998, in the early 2000s we were still shipping OSes with most of the system being world writable.
So while Windows possessed a security model that could work, in practice, it was never implemented, because it required locking down the system on each system, so instead of protecting OS directories, we used the "bolt on" security like Group Policies, etc., to prevent users from doing things. I worked with a bunch of Citrix systems in the late 90s, and we were able to lock down those machines, because you were only talking about locking down a single machine or two, and the defaults were more reasonable. There was PLENTY of software that wouldn't run under Winframe 1.x/2.x gold (2.0 never shipped, Microsoft pulled the license, then bought it to ship Terminal Server and Citrix moved the addons into Metaframe), not because it required the NT 4/Win95 libraries (we could always confirm that using 2.0 Gold that was NT 4 based), but because it made assumptions about access that was reasonable for Win 3.11/Win95, but not NT based OSes. Citrix, targeting big budget Enterprises could get away with that, Microsoft reaching the entire market could not.
I assume that this has been fixed in Vista, but I haven't used it, I switched to Mac OS X in the mean time.
I don't think you know anyone with children. I have two small ones, and have a group of friends with small children. Lots of single income families. Sure they are married with 2 kids in a 2 bedroom condo, and they are driving used cars, but they get by on one income. The reality is, child care is expensive, and unless both earners have professional careers or a successful business, it's hard to net out ahead of child care costs. A 20k-25k second income, after the tax bite, and paying for childcare for 2-3 children, quickly goes negative.
Middle class subsistence? You've got to be kidding. A small 50s era starter home or small apartment, one or two used cars, and careful grocery shopping, you absolutely can do it... That's what middle class subsistence WAS, now if you think middle class subsistence is 2 cars 4 years old, a 4 bedroom house of 3000 square feet and a yard, 400 channels of Cable/Satellite, high speed Internet, multiple computers, meat EVERY NIGHT, then yeah, you can't do it on one income.
I like that latter life, and my wife and I both have masters degrees, and both work. But I don't pretend that it's subsistence, and trying to have the lifestyle that I remember as a child (when I was 8 or 9) and doing it with toddlers means more leverage to have things earlier in life. Plenty of families get by on a single income... but they live modest lives in inexpensive areas.
You haven't actually lost anything until you decide to sell at the lower value. The market will come back, it always does.
That's great, unless I'm 65 and expected to live on the money I get from selling my house, moving to an apartment, and liquidating my investments. The stock market, had I got in 10 years ago and invested in a safe S&P 500 index fund, has done absolutely nothing. Zero return in ten years. Ten years is pretty close to "long term" in my book.
Well, if you are 65 now, then 10 years ago, you were 55. Without any complicated financial planning, using the 100-age as percentage of stocks rule, you should have had 45% stocks:55% bonds 10 years ago, and 35% stocks: 65% bonds now. Your bonds, already outweighing the equity portfolio, did decently over the past 10 years. Also, as you rebalanced each year, you took money off the table.
Long term for equity investments has ALWAYS been defined as 15 - 20 years, so nobody cares what your book is. Why were you 100% equity at 65? Greedy for big returns... You could have sold at any point. The idea that the market should go up, month after month, until your 65th birthday when you liquidate everything is foolishness. If you can't read a basic strategy for investing, than pay a financial advisor to do the basics, but your scenario is stupid. If your plan was to retire at 65, selling your house (that you remortgaged during the bubble... if you bought your house before 2001 you have PLENTY of equity), and sitting on 100% equities until your retirement date, sorry it was a bad plan. Your expectations were unreasonable.
"day traders" are responsible for all the major flux in the markets, and at all times. they should be put to the wall
Day traders are responsible for the unprecedented and unequaled liquidity in the US stock markets. They are the reason you can *always* sell or buy a stock. AIG and other bailout recipients have problems because they held onto assets, like CDS, that now are completely illiquid. They can't sell at any price. What they need is a CDS market filled with day traders who are willing to speculate on those assets and are willing to buy them at *some* price. Without speculating day traders, there is no market for you "long term" investors.
Traders (ignoring the phrase Day Traders, which refers to people with small bankrolls making trades too slowly to get the huge edge) make the market. The growth in traders has led to massively decreased commissions for trading stocks and decreasing bid/ask spreads as the market got more efficient. They also helped with long term price volatility.
However, naked shorts, heavy leverage, massive momentum trading is causing huge volatility in the market right now. For long term buy and hold investors, the 5% daily swings don't really matter, but they are causing fear and panic. The Day Traders are NOT decreasing volatility... Computerized trading at this point might be (buying on drops, selling on bounces), but the Day traders look for a momentum wave, and with stocks swinging 5% a day, there is plenty to do.
If I read him right, he IS a creditor. He paid $15 for the stock certificate, but they tanked and didn't send him one. So he is entitled to his $15 back.
By Uncle bought two CD Burners for $500/piece (should give you the time frame on this) and the company tanked before shipping the drives. The whole thing wound through the bankruptcy process to get him some money back. They couldn't just ship the drives, because the "assets" of the company had to be sold and the creditors paid in order. So they took his money, but the drive still belonged to them until they shipped it.
My wife was an engineering undergrad with a minor in music. Well, come junior year, she had just had an internship in her field of choice and hated it, was looking for other internships, and they all sounded awful, and was taking more classes that she hated... She picked up an accounting job the next summer because the internships sounded awful, and really enjoyed it... the environment was pleasant, it was quantitative without being dreary, and she liked interacting with people instead of chemicals and equipment... So looking over the requirements, she could be done with engineering by doing a joint degree with humanities, and away she went... started graduate school in accounting -- basically night classes to qualify for the CPA exam, and got an accounting job, and is loving it.
Plenty of women that I knew that started out as engineering majors found out that the career path in the engineering world requires a masters to be employable, a PhD to move far, long hours, and crappy pay... perfectly legitimate if you LOVE the science of it, but pretty crappy if you want work/life balance, want a family, etc... there are plenty of well paying career tracks for quantitative women (and men) that don't involve the sciences and are pretty attractive.
Engineering is hard work and pays pretty poorly... largely because the supply of dorky guys without families willing to work long hours for low pay is pretty large... Engineering may be the best paying field out of undergrad, but it's poorly paying when you consider WHAT ELSE those students would be doing... people aren't choosing between Aerospace Engineering and Human Resources, but they might choose between Aerospace and Law... the latter pays way better per hour, with roughly comparable educational requirements.
Medicine, law, finance (current layoffs not withstanding), accounting, marketing, etc., all offer plenty of career options for quantitative people, minimal education requirements (except Medicine), and good pay...
The pay gap is largely a function of cultural factors towards negotiation, general career path choices, career disruptions from family, and a few "general" structural things... an uneducated woman is likely to take an oversupplied gig like secretary/receptionist that pay poorly, while an uneducated man is more likely to take a job in construction, where after the acquisition of some job skills, pays quite well.
The bizarre world of contracting with requirements to work under a contractor serves to erect barriers to entry for competitors to enter the business and keeps salaries up, but also keeps women out... how often to you find a female electrician or plumber? Both those trades are well paying and the women aren't at a large disadvantage from being of smaller stature...
That's where you get big gaps... not the difference in pay of ACTUALLY similar jobs... just artificially stupidly similar stuff, where academics compare education requirements, pretending that a degree in human resources and a degree in physics are equally valuable.
The sedan hasn't gotten smaller, the car seats have gotten bigger. This massive monstrosities are hard to install, and NOT SAFE. According to the propaganda, 95% of car seats are installed improperly. WTF? That's not user error, that's a design flaw. 95% correct, 5% wrong means 5% user error.
It's absolutely NOT safer to have the car seat in the back... it's ONLY safer if you get into an accident. It's way more dangerous because when the kid throws something down and starts screaming, you can't reach them (especially when the seat in rear facing), which means driving with a screaming child... sure if you're in an accident, you're slightly better of, but you are WAY more likely to be in an accident because of the safety measures.
Smaller, economical vehicles are a good thing for commuters that don't have passengers... For a while, the wife drove the minivan, I drove a coupe for commuting. However, once I had to help with car pool, getting kids in and out of the back was a pain, and now I'm in a much larger (and fuel inefficient) vehicle. OTOH, if the government didn't listen to Ralph Nader and make cars death traps for children in return for making them slightly safer for passengers that don't wear a seat belt, I would still be getting twice the mileage in my coupe, because it is only one kid that I've been transporting the past 6 months.
Once I need a big guzzler, might as well drive something I enjoy, and now we have two fuel inefficient vehicles on a truck chassis... Given that they want children in a car seat/booster until age 12, it doesn't seem like a small niche to be able to transport two children safely.
Once a week my son goes and plays at my parents house for a few hours. The Brio trains from when I was a kid still work great, but the cheap knock off add on parts my parents bought to have more for him are crap... they had to find an affordable retailer online to get more stuff. As he's moving past the real little kid blocks and into Duplo, the fact that everything from my childhood held up is remarkable.
However, just about everything that we buy on the market at this point, is cheap and crappy. It's gotten to the point that we just buy whatever is cheapest at Walmart, because trying to get the higher end stuff isn't higher end, just more expensive. Why pay twice as much for the same falling apart plastic junk from the same factories in China? After churning through $100+ car seats, we not just get the $40 ones at Walmart, and when they go, we replace them. I have two kids, 18 months apart, and just about none of the stuff gets handed down because EVERYTHING on the market is poorly made.
It's easy to blame consumers, but a lot is a function of smaller family sizes. The generation born in the 70s was born when average family sizes were over 2.5 kids, so 2-3 was normal, and plenty of families of 4-5 existed. Family sizes for middle class families (the ones that buy this stuff) are probably under 1.5 right now... If most of your customers won't have a second kid, why would they pay more for quality, it's not getting passed down.
America just isn't child friendly anymore... and we have fewer kids in each family... can't put 3 kids in a normal sized sedan, need either a giant sedan, SUV, or minivan with a third kid, and kids under 13 aren't supposed to ride up front... WTF? The sedan was the quintessential family car... now a mom running small carpool with 4 kids in her car needs a minivan because you can't put one up front and 3 in the back, something that was routine for us growing up as kids.
Well, it is nice that in the afternoon I can take my kids to the park, work in the garden, or commute with some day light... All in all, I can actually live my life a lot more because there is daylight when the day is over, and I can enjoy 7 days a week, not 2... But, if we need to use 1% more energy, well let's panic. The energy savings of DST has obviously been silly since light became a small portion of energy usage, but if it's only 1% more, I'd say that's pretty cheap.
I think that I can 50% - more recreational time each week during DST, so if I can do that for 1% more energy, terrific. OTOH, I spent less time watching TV on on the computer because there is more useful daylight, another bonus. Daylight before I get up in the morning doesn't do me any good, but having daylight for my commute in and for my evenings with my family are precious.
I'm always saddened when DST comes to an end. Why the whiners on Slashdot complain about DST, I'll never understand. The transition week is annoying, and my two year old has been struggling with his rhythm being off, but as a trade off for all those summer afternoons in the park with him, it's a bargain.
Right... if we amortize the $300k for selling the business across 10 years, it's $30k/year. Added back to his $75k salary, and it's $105k, which should be at the 28% bracket.
In the real world, we treat that sale of $300k as earned income in the present day, and tax it at 35% (or 39.6% in Obamaland, or 55% in Obama land with unlimited Social Security taxes). So our middle class guy gets a little success, and the government takes most of it because it all came in one calendar year, instead of being spread out.
That's why big corporations do deferred compensation and other nonsense... when the tax rates were higher, you pushed your compensation around to avoid taxes, and world it looks like we're returning to in 2009.
Re read point 3, last time we had those left wing guys in there.
Clinton was NOT left wing, he was VERY centrist... probably slightly center right even in the US. He had a few liberal positions, but not many.
The last leftists to hold office were Johnson and Carter, and they did DANGEROUS things.
Those "Democrats do better in general" studies are nonsense, because there isn't much data and it's skewed by a few things.
The GOP gets slammer for being around during the beginning of the Great Depression. Mistakes were made, but FDR didn't fix them, it just couldn't get worse at that point... so the Democrats get a HUGE boost for being around during the recovery, they also get a HUGE boost from the tail end of WW II under Truman.
The Democrats get a second HUGE boost for the Clinton years, which were hugely successful because 1) the cold war ended and we were able to cut defense spending massively, many of the cuts were initiated during Bush 41's term, but came into effect during Clinton's term... and 2) the technology revolution exploded in the 90s... this had nothing to do with Clinton, he was just there.
Props to Clinton for being an effective administrator in that time period, despite all the distractions from his personal failings, and as a Conservative, I miss his leadership compared to Bush's raid the treasury statism, but Clinton WAS NOT a leftist. In fact, his huge successes came after a VERY Right-wing Congress came into power in 1994 and he tacked to the right.
Bush let Rove direct policy, and Rove decided to buy votes to create a permanent GOP majority, and he destroyed the nation's fiscal health to do it. The GOP's sin was not rebelling against Bush earlier.
All that hollering and screaming about management compensation and golden parachutes? They were ALL OVER the banking system, and they got paid. Apparently any of us INVESTED in the banking system (you know, gamblers with S&P 500 index funds in 401(k) plans) were the idiots and suckers...
Brilliant system... instead of earning 5% interest loaning the money, so I have 105% next year... I loan up on risk and leverage... I have a 90% chance of making 20%... and a 10% chance of losing it all... well, as a diversified Bette, that seems okay, expected amount next year is 108%, 10% risk, 60% increase in return... I'm so good that I'll just take 20% of my excess profits, that I make over 5%... So 90% of the time, I take 3%, you take 17%, still sounds good... and I'll take 1% win/lose to cover my costs, still, 16% is more than 5%, right...
What, the expected return is now 104.4% (116 * 90%)... why, I'd have been better off in a bank CD? Well, that sucks, but 90% of the time, I think you're a genius, 10%, I hate you... but either way, you took millions in fees, and I lost all my money because when you have me $116 back on my $100, I didn't take my profits, I let it ride for 10 years... I thought you were a genius... till I had nothing.
Management fleeced shareholders during the past few booms, and it's terrible, and nobody has a proposal for stopping it.
1. Most of the "rich" being targeted aren't CEOs. 300 million US Citizens, assume 200 million are tax payers? The richest 5% of them are 10 million people and their children... Their are ONLY 500 Fortune 500 CEOs, and ONLY 500 S&P 500 CEOs.
Most of the rich are professionals with advanced degrees and short careers (highly specialized Doctors do 4 years college, 4 years medical school, 6 years residency & specialization, 3 year fellowship -- they are 35 when they earn a living, and because of the surgical specialization, probably can't work past 55 -- they make a boatload of money in those 20 years, but they only make money for 20 years, and they are the best of the best, if they did a 3 year law school program, they'd be making 100k-150k/year right off the bat, so comparing them to lower paid workers is unfair), small business owners that reinvest most of their profits (not all reinvestment is a tax write off, some has to be depreciated, and therefore you pay taxes now), or people in a good year. If someone earns $75k/year running a business for 10 years, but sells it in one year for $300k, the tax code treats that as them earning all that money in that year (capital gains rates don't apply in small business transactions, people buy assets, not the stock), but really that's $30k/year for his work, making him middle class, but Obama would tax that year's gains as though he made it each year.
2. Correct, big rich corporations often cheat the system to avoid showing profit to avoid paying taxes. So what's the point of a higher corporate tax rate that Obama wants? Makes you feel good? Want to sock it to the 30% of the corporations that are honest and pay taxes? Want those 30% to throw in the towel and play games like the other 70%?
The lower the tax rate, the less incentive there is to play games. It costs money to play games, because you deploy your capital less efficiently... If I need a 10% return after taxes, I can make 10% in a tax dodge, or 13.5% in a taxable way, we'd all be better off if I made 13.5%, because I grew the economy, but I'm indifferent because of taxes.
3. Clamor all you want... The last time we had these left wing guys in charge, we did what Obama proposed. The rich put their money in tax shelters, and the economy crumbled. Reagan lowered the taxes, and they sold their muni-bonds, annuities, and tax shelters, and went to make money, and the economy boomed.
It's fine to want to sock it to the rich, but they generally hit you back harder. There is a reason that they are where they are, and we are where we are... those that get rich generally aren't inclined to let us take their stuff.
The $5k credit vs. deductibility is roughly revenue neutral, but has a high likelihood of lowering health care costs. There is STILL a reason for employer run plans, because under McCain's plan, it is exempt from payroll taxes, which at 15% combined employer/employee, is pretty substantial.
If you carry a "normal" plan, $12k/year, at the 28% tax bracket, results in a new tax liability of $3,360... so when you fill our your return, you own an extra $3,360 on your extra $12k in taxable earnings, but get a credit of $5000, so you save $1,640 per year.
The way this is "revenue neutral" is that people with expensive plans and higher tax rates would actually lose out (but they do better in other parts of McCain's plan). If you are a low income worked, right now, with a crappy health plan and 15% tax rate, you'd do great with McCain. $6k plan, means $900 in tax liability, less a $5000 credit means a decreased tax liability of $4100, and I believe that the health insurance credit is refundable (because it goes directly to the insurance company as a payment mechanism).
If you are a rich guy with a super-premium plan that covers everything, you have a $24000 plan at the 35% tax rate you owe $8400 in taxes, get a $5000 credit, and owe an extra $3400. The theory is that the rich guy who was paying $24k for an overpriced plan because he did it inside his company to avoid taxes (it cost him less than $16k pre-tax because of his rate), is likely to switch to a $12k plan now, paying more "out of pocket" since there is no longer an incentive to pay everything in premiums.
The McCain effort is poorly explained, probably not understood by the Senator, but focused on controlling medical costs by removing the incentive to over insure.
The bill in Congress, a bipartisan attempt, requires them to "cash-out" employees, paying them their health care during the 2 year transition, and after that, they pay a health care tax that goes into a subsidy pool for health insurance.
If group plans make sense, companies will offer them. The idea of the credit/tax idea is this:
Right now, if I carry a bare bones plan for $6k, but have $6k in out of pocket expense, I spent $12k on health care, but only $6k was pretax... so I spent $10k in post-tax dollars.
If I carry a $15k plan with $0 in out of pocket expenses (assuming I use more total medical care because it's at a lower cost), I spent $10k in post-tax dollars.
The tax code rewards being over insured, and studies show that higher co-pays or deductibles reduce medical expenses because people actually pay attention.
If I want to spend $10k on plastic surgery, that's post-tax dollars. If I pay an extra $12k to get insurance that offers me $10k in plastic surgery, it costs me $8k in post-tax dollars.
In all these cases, I am financially better off, post-taxes, by spending MORE money on health care. This incentive structure drives up medical expenses and medical inflation.
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Hamas doesn't even need to pick a peaceful means of resolving disputes, they can continue to be a militant resistance. They just can't act like crazed lunatics.
Israel has chosen a violent solution to their problem: Hamas Rockets. They didn't ask, bribe, etc., they are bombing. Violence is acceptable in international disputes.
The problem with Hamas is that they are crazed thugs. They used to "retaliate." If Israel took out one of their important people, they launched a wave of crap at Israel, and the tit-for-tat system caused a someone uneasy truce... Israel would occasionally take out a major Hamas person, and Hamas would blow up a pizza shop/disco hall... or Hamas would see a target of convenience and hit Israel, who would counter attack. That lasted for years.
The problem is that Hamas decided that they were not interest in generally tranquil relations with the occasional period of innocent deaths, they needed a real war with Israel, so they adopted a policy of continual rocket attacks. Instead of waves of attacks when they had some invented cause, they would rocket daily. Eventually they would strike a nerve with Israel, Israel would attack, and they would get the war they needed. They needed a war because they wanted to be the big bad resistance, a crown that Hezbolah grabbed in 2006.
But Hamas has become the crazy thugs of the area, just attacking daily. They aren't looking for anything other than death and destruction, or there would be some sort of meaningful methodology to what is going on.
The entertainment industry was an extremely enthusiastic and early backer of Barack Obama. When he needed large masses of money to make abandoning the finance system smart, they were ponying up millions for him, in a single night, so he didn't have to do multiple big fundraisers. The Democratic Party has been a heavy recipient of financial support from them. Unions supplied the GOTV manpower for the party, even if Senator Obama built his own network as well, and the entertainment industry, trial lawyers, and other big money components like Wall Street (Wall Street has been 2:1 Democrat since the Party and Street realized under Clinton that a careful tax and regulation policy can snuff out competition, raising stock prices, even if you have to pay more in taxes).
There are many positive aspects to Sen. Obama's election and becoming President in 11 days. There may be some positive aspects of the enlarged Democratic majority in Congress (I hate large majorities in Congress, because if you don't need moderates in both parties, the wing nuts are in charge).
But don't pretend that pro Entertainment legislation, laws that make more things civil torts as enforcement, and business regulations that somehow entrench the oligopolies that most of the S&P 500 firms operate in, and protect the existing financial sector players at the expense of smaller competition isn't part of the equation.
When the GOP gets power, the religious right gets bones on a bunch of abortion related policies (funding orgs, etc.), the military industrial complex gets Fed, defense contractors get big contracts, etc.
But, if you expect the new administration and Congress to be supportive of the anti-copyright ideals of Slashdot, you are simply ignoring who butters the Democratic Parties bread.
Really? Hamas dates back to 1982, Israel has held the greater Gaza City area since 1967... in those 15 years, were the Palestinians wiped off the map?
Settlement in Gaza wasn't really popular, because it's in the middle of nowhere. The "strategic" settlements have always been a small minority of the settlements, people really committed to greater Israel, and mostly a religious zionist population looking for cheap land for large families and the ability to work the land.
Most of the Israeli population centers in the disputed territories are in a small ring around Jerusalem... because people commute from there to the nation's capital.
If the Palestinians wanted a state, and came out and set, "We offer peaceful living, we want Gaza, and the land on the West Bank of the Jordan except major population centers around Jerusalem, to replace Jordan's control of Muslim religious sites in Jerusalem, and will agree to small Jewish section of Hebron in return for a small Palestinian controlled section of Jerusalem, and the right of return is the right to return to Palestinian areas," you'd have peace tomorrow. That's not so far off from what is possible, and Israel could agree to it in a heart beat.
Instead, it's all about "resistance." They don't even know what they are resisting anymore, but they've raised generations of their people on hate and death worship, and they don't even have reasonable goals. Israel has spent 17 years getting the people ready for a two state solution, the Palestinian leadership still claims all of Mandate Palestine west of the Jordan river.
No, collective punishment is when a militant hides in a city, and rather than risking troops to flush them out, you carpet bomb the city. "Intimidating the population," "crimes of the few," the government of Gaza is Hamas... defacto since they ousted the PA, and quasi-legally since Hamas's legislative electoral victory was based on dominating (70%+) the votes in Gaza. The blockade is legal because Israel is in a state of belligerency with Hamas run Gaza.
What is magical about the 1966 borders? What makes them legitimate? Or do you want to go back to 1948 (Egypt and Israel did a small land swap between the wars, which Hamas originally claimed that the Gaza withdrawal was incomplete. Or do you mean the UN Partition plan, rejected by the Arab side? Israel has NEVER had a recognized eastern border... the 1948 armistice line was an armistice demarkation, NOT a legal boder... and with the withdrawal from Gaza, Israel IS within it's pre-1967 borders in the disputed area.
Whenever Israel gives up land to "get the moral high ground," they get attacked from that land, and critics conveniently forget that they gave up that land. Israel retreated from Gaza, and rockets rained down ever since, so why on earth should they withdraw from land where rockets could hit major population and economic centers like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Take a trip to Israel one time, IT ISN'T THAT big, without passage through Judea and Samaria (which you really don't have), the country has a choke point where it is too narrow to be safe. Israel, grabbing Gaza, cut it in half. When Jordan last launched an attack (1967), they tried to split the country in two. That's a dangerous situation without a reason to believe that it will be peaceful.
Correct, however, Islam isn't a problem. RAMBAM ruled that Islam wasn't worshiping of false gods or idolatry, and therefore a valid Noachide faith. While Ashkenazi law doesn't really deal with Islam, Sephardic law generally follows RAMBAM, and in theory for land based issues, Sephardic law governs Israel because it's in the Sephardic area. Ashkenazi customs don't dispute RAMBAM's ruling, so there is ZERO problem, under Orthodox Judaism, for Muslims to live and dwell within the land referred to as Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel, basically Jewish lands).
The Mosque on top of the Temple Mount is a separate issue, mostly because it's inconveniently located where the Third Temple will stand. However, without an unblemished red heffer, you can't purify people to enter the holiest areas, so under Orthodox law, Jews can't enter there. So while Orthodox Jewish law may prohibit the Dome of the Rock, nobody can really do anything about it, so it's an academic issue.
Regarding Christianity, there is no issue with non-Jews worshiping Jesus as messiah. There is a question of whether the worship of the trinity, statues of saints (in Catholic Churches), renders Christianity idolatry... but no ruling that it is... the the rule of thumb is not to enter a Church, in case it IS idolatry, but that the non Jewish Christians inside it aren't necessarily engaged in idolatry so the rules regarding idolatry don't apply either.
Now I have ZERO clue what the law says regarding a Hindu Temple setting up shop in Israel, but that's WAY above my pay grade. If you want real explanations, and not a very lay explanation on Slashdot, consult your local Orthodox Rabbi.
Any issues that lay Jews have with Christianity isn't theological in nature, but rather a series of rulings during centuries of Christian persecution, which likely colored the judgment of the Ashkenazi Rabbis.
What time period is that? At no point has anyone on the Palestinian side said that. The 1948 partition was no good, the 1967 lines were no good for years, no the Clinton parameters are no good.
Most of Israel has abandoned Greater Israel... Golan is a different matter than the west bank of the Jordan or the Gaza strip... and the old city of Jerusalem.
However, if the Palestinians were serious about peace, they would agree the the Right of Return is not realistic, and that a financial settlement INCLUDING the displaced Jews from Arab lands and the displaced Arabs in now-Jewish lands would be worked out.
If that were the case, we'd be arguing over borders.
You are welcome to wish/dream/pray that Israel will cease to exist as a nation... but if you think that the Israelis will stand by and let that happen, you're dreaming... and you're not advocating peace.
Israel normally gets massive amounts of terror and destruction in response to giving up land... when they do what you don't want them to do, occupy and settle land, they get relative peace and tranquility. When they abandon the land and retreat, they get attacked from that land. So regardless of what you think is right, if you were Israel, would you keep trading land for peace, or say screw it, and return to occupation.
Did I ever suggest that Hamas didn't have the right to rocket Israel? Gaza and Israel are in a state of belligerency. They are hostile powers. When there is a cease fire, they cease fire, the rest of the time, they fight.
Hamas is well within its rights, as the defacto government of Gaza, to wage war against Israel in response to the blockade. In doing so, they are permitted to attack any valid military target. I think that Israelis that call it terrorism when they attack troops/bases are out of their mind. Similarly, the nuclear powerplant in Dimona is a perfectly valid target, as are any of the ports in the area. Sderot, on the other hand, is a small development town with no strategic relevance. Now, if they target Dimona and hit Sderot, that's not a war crime, but they aren't in the same direction, so they'd be liars.
Israel retaliated, in 1967, for an "illegal" blockade, which is an act of war.
Hamas is perfectly permitted to engage in hostilities with Israel. Hamas is NOT permitted to engage in Perfidy and other war crimes while the Israel bashers blame Israel for civilian deaths.
War is not illegal... Hamas's actions are illegal. Hamas may fire rockets towards Israeli military and government targets, but Israel is permitted to respond to that act of war with its own acts of war.
You seem to be confused as to the nature of war crimes. It is a SEVERE war crime, Perfidy to do what those two militants did. You are expressing outrage at the wrong side. Those two Hamas Militants caused the deaths of 68 civilians by engaging in Perfidy, their families should be mourning and begging for forgiveness for the acts of their kin.
It is NOT acceptable for militants to hide amongst civilians so that when they are killed, there are civilian deaths.
If 3 men rob a bank, and the SWAT team has to storm it, and innocent people die, do you blame the SWAT team, or the bank robbers? Any harm that comes to someone as a result of your criminal actions is your fault.
Like the SWAT team, the IDF tries to minimize civilian casualties (called collateral damage in military matters), but should NOT be held responsible for those deaths.
Attitudes like yours are WHY this crap goes on. If Hamas were condemned, instead of Israel, from deaths related to their acts of terror (targeting civilians with rockets), or in cases like this, Perfidy, we'd probably have a peace process. Instead, because people like you sympathize with these monsters, the Gazans are under attack because there is no way to root out Hamas. Hamas hides behind "human shields" forcing civilian casualties...
NEARLY EVERY SINGLE CIVILIAN CASUALTY IN GAZA WOULD be AVOIDED IF THE MILITANTS WORE UNIFORMS AND AVOIDED CIVILIAN AREAS, requirements of a militia under the laws of war. Hamas has chosen to increase civilian casualties to mount political pressure on Israel. Every single person that protest this operation BECAUSE OF CIVILIAN CASUALTIES has blood on their hands, because you encourage Hamas to maximize the civilian deaths in Gaza.
Israel is targeting the 15000 militants in Hamas. Every peace of collateral damage is a result of Hamas's wanton war crimes.
The thing with unions is that, when protected by law in closed shop states, is that they become a monopoly on labor. As we know in other markets, a monopoly is able to extract rents and create deadweight losses in the economy. Classical economics looks at where unions are economically useful and dangerous, consider a few scenarios.
1. Highly specialized labor (single monopsony employer)... there is only one buyer for this labor... In this scenario, I have poor bargaining power. If my labor is worth $100/hour to the employer, I should be able to extract a wage of approximately $25/hour. However, if my skills are non transferrable, so if I leave my employer, I need a semi-skilled job at $12.50/hour, I have a poor bargaining position. The wage negotiation is between $12.50 (my BATNA - best alternative to a negotiated agreement) and $50, the value to the employer less fringe/overhead costs. In an open market, you'd expect the salaries to be around $25 (1/4 the gross value to the company), if labor is scarce with a bunch of employers (see a scenario like professional sports with free agency), the employee can extract more of the surplus, but if the employers are scarce (highly trained systems level Windows programmers), then I have difficulty extracting a good wage. In this scenario, which was the classical unionization scenario, unions help employees get fair compensation, because with only one buyer of labor, they have monopsony power, so union monopoly/employer monopsony can help the marketplace. Keep in mind, during the heavy unionization of Detroit and the growth of its benefits, we suspended the market economy in war time with all sorts of industrial boards to allow companies to collude during the Great Depression and WW II, so the automotive industry, steel industry, etc., were effectively a single employer.
So with unions, you fight over the surplus, without unions, the specialized employer is able to extract most of it... This scenario also played out in plenty of small "company towns" where a single mill, mine, factory, or plant was the primary employer in the town. Without employee protections, the employer was free to exploit the workers because there was
2. Scare labor, plentiful employers... Look at professional sports post free agency, pre salary caps. The supply of genuine game changing players is VERY small, there are only a handful of baseball pitchers and showy sluggers, basketball players (playmakers in any position dominate), quarterbacks, running backs, etc. that can dramatically influence a teams fortunes (success on the field, putting people in stands, selling merchandise). That's why the leagues attempt to skirt anti-trust by doing things as a league and claiming that their competition is other sports, and the players unions basically used their status as unions (with those anti-trust exemptions) to permit it. In the early days of free agency in baseball, you saw salaries for star players EXPLODE, while lots of players languished at or near the "league minimum," and most baseball teams lose money. The idea of salary caps in other sports was an attempt, in the name of "competitiveness and parity" to keep more of the profits for the owners... If there are only 5 amazing quarterbacks in the league, and teams had to pay fair market for them, they'd extract most of the profits from the team. Sports have some unique characteristics that make this arrangement reasonable... you aren't out to destroy your competition, just best them... the Yankees want to beat the Red Sox, they aren't trying to put them out of business to eliminate competition. But, the tighter the salary caps, the less the top players make, because it temper demand for them, but the most competitive the league is (to a point). The union is necessary if the league is allowed to collude to keep prices down, take out the collusion, and the "workers" would extract most of the profits from sports.
3. Common labor, scarce employers... Here the employer should be able to keep wages down... There is
You have a BRAND NEW vaccine, where we don't have long term data on it, that prevents a disease that affects a small percentage of people with a virus... oh, and the only way to get that virus is a behavior that they don't their children to engage in. Given that vaccines always carry SOME risk, however small, it isn't necessarily irrational that they not want their young daughters given it.
I have a cousin, as secular as they come, that passed on giving it to his daughter that was 10 at the time. He thinks that it's probably a good idea in a few years, but that his non sexually active daughter didn't need to be a guinea pig, and that by the time she was 14 or 15, we'd then have 4-5 years of results, which seemed better than 0.
That said, vaccinating people "at risk" is BAD public policy, since the ideal vaccination is blanket to wipe out the virus. A 90% effective vaccine with 95% penetration is probably more useful than a 95% vaccination with 30% penetration, because you can eliminate spreading the virus, which generally wipes it out.
I thought that that was a fair disclaimer. I'm an NT 4 MSCE, and Citrix Metaframe 1.8 CCA. I disclosed that I'm not aware of how this plays out on Vista, but that I assumed it was fixed, Vista broke a lot of backwards compatibility to modernize things.
I discussed the historical problems with Windows Security, why it was a difficult problem to fix. I can't comment on Windows Vista, I use OS X as my desktop OS now, Red Hat Linux as my server OS, and run XP under Parallels for the occasional Windows App.
Comparing Windows NT 5.x (2000/XP) to Mac OS 7.5 is beyond absurd. The Win2K/WinXP product line is one major revision back. OS 7.5 is about 6 major (treating System 8/9 as one major version, OS 10.0/10.1 were pretty similar, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, and 10.5 were major revisions under the hood). There is no Windows NT system 6 major revisions back, you'd be comparing Windows 386 2.0 (or being generous, 3.0) to get something as comparatively archaic.
However, a user's opinion on OS X from 10.3 or 10.4 wouldn't be irrelevant to a discussion of OS X, because while the architecture has underwent substantial changes, the core is similar. Vista appears to be a major break from the NT 3.51/NT 4/Win2K_XP product line, not as substantial a break as Windows -> Windows NT (Or Mac OS -> Mac OS X) was, but similar to the NT 3.1 -> NT 3.51 break... the major break from NT 3.51 -> 4.0 was the introduction of the Win95 libraries for applications and migration of the video system into the kernel.
No, the Windows problem was that to migrate from DOS + Windows shell to Windows NT, was a slow, painful 10 year process with LOTS of growing pains. Windows 4.x series (Win95, Win98, WinME) were supposed to be a singular OS before the transition to NT, and was created because the uptick to NT 3.51 was low because of the RAM requirements. The original plan was 3.1 for home users, NT 3.1 for "Workstations," and Win32s was released to let people target both OSes.
As we moved through Win 3.11 w/ Win32s -> Win95 -> Win98 -> WinME, the NT systems grew in popularity. Lack of advanced DirectX support prevented NT 4.0's being the transition, Win2K was close but price kept it out, and WinXP finally merged the OSes. By that point, it'd been 8 years or so since the first 32-bit programs came out. The ones targeted mass market, originally Win32s, and later Win95/NT4 libraries, were generally assuming the consumer version. On the consumer Windows, there WAS NO SECURITY model, so it was common for applications to assume lots of access. This meant that while NT 4.0/Win2K gained market share and had the security model from the NT system, the security wasn't used and users had full access to the drive, because the alternative was broken software.
To not break applications from 1995 - 1998, in the early 2000s we were still shipping OSes with most of the system being world writable.
So while Windows possessed a security model that could work, in practice, it was never implemented, because it required locking down the system on each system, so instead of protecting OS directories, we used the "bolt on" security like Group Policies, etc., to prevent users from doing things. I worked with a bunch of Citrix systems in the late 90s, and we were able to lock down those machines, because you were only talking about locking down a single machine or two, and the defaults were more reasonable. There was PLENTY of software that wouldn't run under Winframe 1.x/2.x gold (2.0 never shipped, Microsoft pulled the license, then bought it to ship Terminal Server and Citrix moved the addons into Metaframe), not because it required the NT 4/Win95 libraries (we could always confirm that using 2.0 Gold that was NT 4 based), but because it made assumptions about access that was reasonable for Win 3.11/Win95, but not NT based OSes. Citrix, targeting big budget Enterprises could get away with that, Microsoft reaching the entire market could not.
I assume that this has been fixed in Vista, but I haven't used it, I switched to Mac OS X in the mean time.
I don't think you know anyone with children. I have two small ones, and have a group of friends with small children. Lots of single income families. Sure they are married with 2 kids in a 2 bedroom condo, and they are driving used cars, but they get by on one income. The reality is, child care is expensive, and unless both earners have professional careers or a successful business, it's hard to net out ahead of child care costs. A 20k-25k second income, after the tax bite, and paying for childcare for 2-3 children, quickly goes negative.
Middle class subsistence? You've got to be kidding. A small 50s era starter home or small apartment, one or two used cars, and careful grocery shopping, you absolutely can do it... That's what middle class subsistence WAS, now if you think middle class subsistence is 2 cars 4 years old, a 4 bedroom house of 3000 square feet and a yard, 400 channels of Cable/Satellite, high speed Internet, multiple computers, meat EVERY NIGHT, then yeah, you can't do it on one income.
I like that latter life, and my wife and I both have masters degrees, and both work. But I don't pretend that it's subsistence, and trying to have the lifestyle that I remember as a child (when I was 8 or 9) and doing it with toddlers means more leverage to have things earlier in life. Plenty of families get by on a single income... but they live modest lives in inexpensive areas.
If I read him right, he IS a creditor. He paid $15 for the stock certificate, but they tanked and didn't send him one. So he is entitled to his $15 back.
By Uncle bought two CD Burners for $500/piece (should give you the time frame on this) and the company tanked before shipping the drives. The whole thing wound through the bankruptcy process to get him some money back. They couldn't just ship the drives, because the "assets" of the company had to be sold and the creditors paid in order. So they took his money, but the drive still belonged to them until they shipped it.
My wife was an engineering undergrad with a minor in music. Well, come junior year, she had just had an internship in her field of choice and hated it, was looking for other internships, and they all sounded awful, and was taking more classes that she hated... She picked up an accounting job the next summer because the internships sounded awful, and really enjoyed it... the environment was pleasant, it was quantitative without being dreary, and she liked interacting with people instead of chemicals and equipment... So looking over the requirements, she could be done with engineering by doing a joint degree with humanities, and away she went... started graduate school in accounting -- basically night classes to qualify for the CPA exam, and got an accounting job, and is loving it.
Plenty of women that I knew that started out as engineering majors found out that the career path in the engineering world requires a masters to be employable, a PhD to move far, long hours, and crappy pay... perfectly legitimate if you LOVE the science of it, but pretty crappy if you want work/life balance, want a family, etc... there are plenty of well paying career tracks for quantitative women (and men) that don't involve the sciences and are pretty attractive.
Engineering is hard work and pays pretty poorly... largely because the supply of dorky guys without families willing to work long hours for low pay is pretty large... Engineering may be the best paying field out of undergrad, but it's poorly paying when you consider WHAT ELSE those students would be doing... people aren't choosing between Aerospace Engineering and Human Resources, but they might choose between Aerospace and Law... the latter pays way better per hour, with roughly comparable educational requirements.
Medicine, law, finance (current layoffs not withstanding), accounting, marketing, etc., all offer plenty of career options for quantitative people, minimal education requirements (except Medicine), and good pay...
The pay gap is largely a function of cultural factors towards negotiation, general career path choices, career disruptions from family, and a few "general" structural things... an uneducated woman is likely to take an oversupplied gig like secretary/receptionist that pay poorly, while an uneducated man is more likely to take a job in construction, where after the acquisition of some job skills, pays quite well.
The bizarre world of contracting with requirements to work under a contractor serves to erect barriers to entry for competitors to enter the business and keeps salaries up, but also keeps women out... how often to you find a female electrician or plumber? Both those trades are well paying and the women aren't at a large disadvantage from being of smaller stature...
That's where you get big gaps... not the difference in pay of ACTUALLY similar jobs... just artificially stupidly similar stuff, where academics compare education requirements, pretending that a degree in human resources and a degree in physics are equally valuable.
The sedan hasn't gotten smaller, the car seats have gotten bigger. This massive monstrosities are hard to install, and NOT SAFE. According to the propaganda, 95% of car seats are installed improperly. WTF? That's not user error, that's a design flaw. 95% correct, 5% wrong means 5% user error.
It's absolutely NOT safer to have the car seat in the back... it's ONLY safer if you get into an accident. It's way more dangerous because when the kid throws something down and starts screaming, you can't reach them (especially when the seat in rear facing), which means driving with a screaming child... sure if you're in an accident, you're slightly better of, but you are WAY more likely to be in an accident because of the safety measures.
Smaller, economical vehicles are a good thing for commuters that don't have passengers... For a while, the wife drove the minivan, I drove a coupe for commuting. However, once I had to help with car pool, getting kids in and out of the back was a pain, and now I'm in a much larger (and fuel inefficient) vehicle. OTOH, if the government didn't listen to Ralph Nader and make cars death traps for children in return for making them slightly safer for passengers that don't wear a seat belt, I would still be getting twice the mileage in my coupe, because it is only one kid that I've been transporting the past 6 months.
Once I need a big guzzler, might as well drive something I enjoy, and now we have two fuel inefficient vehicles on a truck chassis... Given that they want children in a car seat/booster until age 12, it doesn't seem like a small niche to be able to transport two children safely.
Once a week my son goes and plays at my parents house for a few hours. The Brio trains from when I was a kid still work great, but the cheap knock off add on parts my parents bought to have more for him are crap... they had to find an affordable retailer online to get more stuff. As he's moving past the real little kid blocks and into Duplo, the fact that everything from my childhood held up is remarkable.
However, just about everything that we buy on the market at this point, is cheap and crappy. It's gotten to the point that we just buy whatever is cheapest at Walmart, because trying to get the higher end stuff isn't higher end, just more expensive. Why pay twice as much for the same falling apart plastic junk from the same factories in China? After churning through $100+ car seats, we not just get the $40 ones at Walmart, and when they go, we replace them. I have two kids, 18 months apart, and just about none of the stuff gets handed down because EVERYTHING on the market is poorly made.
It's easy to blame consumers, but a lot is a function of smaller family sizes. The generation born in the 70s was born when average family sizes were over 2.5 kids, so 2-3 was normal, and plenty of families of 4-5 existed. Family sizes for middle class families (the ones that buy this stuff) are probably under 1.5 right now... If most of your customers won't have a second kid, why would they pay more for quality, it's not getting passed down.
America just isn't child friendly anymore... and we have fewer kids in each family... can't put 3 kids in a normal sized sedan, need either a giant sedan, SUV, or minivan with a third kid, and kids under 13 aren't supposed to ride up front... WTF? The sedan was the quintessential family car... now a mom running small carpool with 4 kids in her car needs a minivan because you can't put one up front and 3 in the back, something that was routine for us growing up as kids.
Alex
Well, it is nice that in the afternoon I can take my kids to the park, work in the garden, or commute with some day light... All in all, I can actually live my life a lot more because there is daylight when the day is over, and I can enjoy 7 days a week, not 2... But, if we need to use 1% more energy, well let's panic. The energy savings of DST has obviously been silly since light became a small portion of energy usage, but if it's only 1% more, I'd say that's pretty cheap.
I think that I can 50% - more recreational time each week during DST, so if I can do that for 1% more energy, terrific. OTOH, I spent less time watching TV on on the computer because there is more useful daylight, another bonus. Daylight before I get up in the morning doesn't do me any good, but having daylight for my commute in and for my evenings with my family are precious.
I'm always saddened when DST comes to an end. Why the whiners on Slashdot complain about DST, I'll never understand. The transition week is annoying, and my two year old has been struggling with his rhythm being off, but as a trade off for all those summer afternoons in the park with him, it's a bargain.
Right... if we amortize the $300k for selling the business across 10 years, it's $30k/year. Added back to his $75k salary, and it's $105k, which should be at the 28% bracket.
In the real world, we treat that sale of $300k as earned income in the present day, and tax it at 35% (or 39.6% in Obamaland, or 55% in Obama land with unlimited Social Security taxes). So our middle class guy gets a little success, and the government takes most of it because it all came in one calendar year, instead of being spread out.
That's why big corporations do deferred compensation and other nonsense... when the tax rates were higher, you pushed your compensation around to avoid taxes, and world it looks like we're returning to in 2009.
Re read point 3, last time we had those left wing guys in there.
Clinton was NOT left wing, he was VERY centrist... probably slightly center right even in the US. He had a few liberal positions, but not many.
The last leftists to hold office were Johnson and Carter, and they did DANGEROUS things.
Those "Democrats do better in general" studies are nonsense, because there isn't much data and it's skewed by a few things.
The GOP gets slammer for being around during the beginning of the Great Depression. Mistakes were made, but FDR didn't fix them, it just couldn't get worse at that point... so the Democrats get a HUGE boost for being around during the recovery, they also get a HUGE boost from the tail end of WW II under Truman.
The Democrats get a second HUGE boost for the Clinton years, which were hugely successful because 1) the cold war ended and we were able to cut defense spending massively, many of the cuts were initiated during Bush 41's term, but came into effect during Clinton's term... and 2) the technology revolution exploded in the 90s... this had nothing to do with Clinton, he was just there.
Props to Clinton for being an effective administrator in that time period, despite all the distractions from his personal failings, and as a Conservative, I miss his leadership compared to Bush's raid the treasury statism, but Clinton WAS NOT a leftist. In fact, his huge successes came after a VERY Right-wing Congress came into power in 1994 and he tacked to the right.
Bush let Rove direct policy, and Rove decided to buy votes to create a permanent GOP majority, and he destroyed the nation's fiscal health to do it. The GOP's sin was not rebelling against Bush earlier.
All that hollering and screaming about management compensation and golden parachutes? They were ALL OVER the banking system, and they got paid. Apparently any of us INVESTED in the banking system (you know, gamblers with S&P 500 index funds in 401(k) plans) were the idiots and suckers...
Brilliant system... instead of earning 5% interest loaning the money, so I have 105% next year... I loan up on risk and leverage... I have a 90% chance of making 20%... and a 10% chance of losing it all... well, as a diversified Bette, that seems okay, expected amount next year is 108%, 10% risk, 60% increase in return... I'm so good that I'll just take 20% of my excess profits, that I make over 5%... So 90% of the time, I take 3%, you take 17%, still sounds good... and I'll take 1% win/lose to cover my costs, still, 16% is more than 5%, right...
What, the expected return is now 104.4% (116 * 90%)... why, I'd have been better off in a bank CD? Well, that sucks, but 90% of the time, I think you're a genius, 10%, I hate you... but either way, you took millions in fees, and I lost all my money because when you have me $116 back on my $100, I didn't take my profits, I let it ride for 10 years... I thought you were a genius... till I had nothing.
Management fleeced shareholders during the past few booms, and it's terrible, and nobody has a proposal for stopping it.
1. Most of the "rich" being targeted aren't CEOs. 300 million US Citizens, assume 200 million are tax payers? The richest 5% of them are 10 million people and their children... Their are ONLY 500 Fortune 500 CEOs, and ONLY 500 S&P 500 CEOs.
Most of the rich are professionals with advanced degrees and short careers (highly specialized Doctors do 4 years college, 4 years medical school, 6 years residency & specialization, 3 year fellowship -- they are 35 when they earn a living, and because of the surgical specialization, probably can't work past 55 -- they make a boatload of money in those 20 years, but they only make money for 20 years, and they are the best of the best, if they did a 3 year law school program, they'd be making 100k-150k/year right off the bat, so comparing them to lower paid workers is unfair), small business owners that reinvest most of their profits (not all reinvestment is a tax write off, some has to be depreciated, and therefore you pay taxes now), or people in a good year. If someone earns $75k/year running a business for 10 years, but sells it in one year for $300k, the tax code treats that as them earning all that money in that year (capital gains rates don't apply in small business transactions, people buy assets, not the stock), but really that's $30k/year for his work, making him middle class, but Obama would tax that year's gains as though he made it each year.
2. Correct, big rich corporations often cheat the system to avoid showing profit to avoid paying taxes. So what's the point of a higher corporate tax rate that Obama wants? Makes you feel good? Want to sock it to the 30% of the corporations that are honest and pay taxes? Want those 30% to throw in the towel and play games like the other 70%?
The lower the tax rate, the less incentive there is to play games. It costs money to play games, because you deploy your capital less efficiently... If I need a 10% return after taxes, I can make 10% in a tax dodge, or 13.5% in a taxable way, we'd all be better off if I made 13.5%, because I grew the economy, but I'm indifferent because of taxes.
3. Clamor all you want... The last time we had these left wing guys in charge, we did what Obama proposed. The rich put their money in tax shelters, and the economy crumbled. Reagan lowered the taxes, and they sold their muni-bonds, annuities, and tax shelters, and went to make money, and the economy boomed.
It's fine to want to sock it to the rich, but they generally hit you back harder. There is a reason that they are where they are, and we are where we are... those that get rich generally aren't inclined to let us take their stuff.
The $5k credit vs. deductibility is roughly revenue neutral, but has a high likelihood of lowering health care costs. There is STILL a reason for employer run plans, because under McCain's plan, it is exempt from payroll taxes, which at 15% combined employer/employee, is pretty substantial.
If you carry a "normal" plan, $12k/year, at the 28% tax bracket, results in a new tax liability of $3,360... so when you fill our your return, you own an extra $3,360 on your extra $12k in taxable earnings, but get a credit of $5000, so you save $1,640 per year.
The way this is "revenue neutral" is that people with expensive plans and higher tax rates would actually lose out (but they do better in other parts of McCain's plan). If you are a low income worked, right now, with a crappy health plan and 15% tax rate, you'd do great with McCain. $6k plan, means $900 in tax liability, less a $5000 credit means a decreased tax liability of $4100, and I believe that the health insurance credit is refundable (because it goes directly to the insurance company as a payment mechanism).
If you are a rich guy with a super-premium plan that covers everything, you have a $24000 plan at the 35% tax rate you owe $8400 in taxes, get a $5000 credit, and owe an extra $3400. The theory is that the rich guy who was paying $24k for an overpriced plan because he did it inside his company to avoid taxes (it cost him less than $16k pre-tax because of his rate), is likely to switch to a $12k plan now, paying more "out of pocket" since there is no longer an incentive to pay everything in premiums.
The McCain effort is poorly explained, probably not understood by the Senator, but focused on controlling medical costs by removing the incentive to over insure.
The bill in Congress, a bipartisan attempt, requires them to "cash-out" employees, paying them their health care during the 2 year transition, and after that, they pay a health care tax that goes into a subsidy pool for health insurance.
If group plans make sense, companies will offer them. The idea of the credit/tax idea is this:
Right now, if I carry a bare bones plan for $6k, but have $6k in out of pocket expense, I spent $12k on health care, but only $6k was pretax... so I spent $10k in post-tax dollars.
If I carry a $15k plan with $0 in out of pocket expenses (assuming I use more total medical care because it's at a lower cost), I spent $10k in post-tax dollars.
The tax code rewards being over insured, and studies show that higher co-pays or deductibles reduce medical expenses because people actually pay attention.
If I want to spend $10k on plastic surgery, that's post-tax dollars. If I pay an extra $12k to get insurance that offers me $10k in plastic surgery, it costs me $8k in post-tax dollars.
In all these cases, I am financially better off, post-taxes, by spending MORE money on health care. This incentive structure drives up medical expenses and medical inflation.